Darkest Waters

An ancient and implacable evil turns its attention upward.

Kor

Kor is not so different from Earth, with its frozen poles and huge oceans. It has more, and smaller, continents. This leads to a great deal more tectonic activity, and suggests a relatively young world. Our game is set in the northern hemisphere, around the 45th parallel, on one of the larger continents. Its topology and weather are analogous to central Europe. Stepping from Earth to Kor via this game, one might easily imagine themselves wandering France and Germany.

At least one continental shelf is small enough that it shifts dramatically over century-long cycles. Floating on a magma bubble, it sometimes drifts close enough to its nearest neighboring continent that the two continental shelves grind together and stick for a while. Inevitably, it eventually works free to drift the other way. Needless to say, these are cataclysmic events, by any measure.

The first race thought to live on Kor were the Elves. There is room for debate, and some theorize that the Dragons were first. However, the first recorded histories were all Elvish.

Kor revolves fully every 28 hours, marking a single day in that time. The planet has a very regular lunar cycles which is 32 days long. These cycles are tracked relative to other stellar and sidereal phenomena, and each 11 cycles are recorded as a single year. There are an additional 8 days which are tracked separately from the lunar months over the course of a year. These days coincide with cosmological events which are annual in cycle. There are another handful of days that come and go from the year over longer cycles, such as decades and centuries. The cause of these predictable but strange alterations in orbits is a mystery most races never ponder. Those who do keep the secrets of their investigations quite hidden.

Various races track the march of time differently. Arkandian calendars mark time around an epoch called Founding. Year 1 of the founding is agreed upon as the year the kingdom was first created by High King Arkand. All time before that is counted backwards from the Founding and referred to as the Searching. As our heroes are departing Arkandia and braving the Vast, it is 904 AF (Arkand Founding). High King Arkand first set sail from his home continent in the year 6 AS (Arkand Searching).